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On This Day – March 12th

The year is 1922. Léo-Alcide Kéroack and Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque had no idea that the baby boy they welcomed into the world would become an icon of the Beat Generation.
Jack Kerouac was a man of many talents. In high school he was a football star, earning scholarships to Columbia University, among others. His football career would be cut short by a broken leg. Before he became the poet and author we all learned about, he was a Navy man in World War II. His service however was cut short due to personality problems attributed to mental illness. Jack would continue his adventures on the seas as a merchant seaman for a couple of years. By the late 1940s he would begin his wandering journey that would later become fuel for his story, On the Road. Jack rubbed elbows with the likes of Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs. Marijuana smoke and alcohol turning into creative flourishes of poetry that people still pattern themselves after today in dark coffee shops.

Excerpt from On the Road “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh…”

I say take today to go be like the “mad ones” Jack wrote about my Gentle Readers. Until next time. Live well, write well, be well.